This is a question I’m often asked.  My series starts late in 2001 with Hazel Fauld first meeting Annie on the school bus.  It’s set just over 20 years ago now, in a world not that different to today’s.  So why didn’t I just start in the then present day, which would have been 2018?

The books were always meant to form a series and I always planned to follow my two main characters, Hazel and Tina, from schooldays to the cusp of middle age.  I also wanted to see irrepressible toddler Sofie through to adulthood.  That meant a 20+ year story arc and I write my way quite a bit faster through time than reality.

As a result, if I’d started in the present day, I’d have had to work into the future.  The trouble is, I’ve simply no idea what the world is going to be like around 2038, or frankly even 2028.  Things have got so strange recently.  We’ve seen growing authoritarianism in countries we’d taken for granted as beacons of liberal democracy.  We have war in Europe.  The rise of Artificial Intelligence might change things in ways we can hardly imagine as yet, and so it goes on.

The plan then was to start the series just far enough back in the past that it would end in the present day of when the final book appears.  We’ll see if I’ve judged it right.

Of course, the snag is, I’m not sure what will be the final book.  I keep getting ideas for new ones.